Telum Talks To... Lisa Davies, Editor, The Sydney Morning Herald

Telum spoke exclusively with the Editor of the SMH about working with the newsroom during the COVID-19 situation in Australia

Telum Media spoke with Lisa Davies, Editor of The Sydney Morning Herald to talk about how the SMH team are working to put out a newspaper during the unfolding COVID-19 situation in Australia, and how people can most effectively work with the newsroom and the SMH journalists at this time.

Key takeaways:

The Sydney Morning Herald journalists have been increasingly working from home, and on Tuesday, 17th March the entire newsroom worked remotely to test that the paper can be put out with the whole team working remotely.

Deadlines have been moved forward slightly to accommodate any longer production times due to working remotely.

Some staff are attending relevant COVID-19 related press conferences, however are actively managing risks in terms of social-distancing. And, as above, most journalists are working remotely.

Organisations and businesses who need to liaise with The Sydney Morning Herald should continue to use existing channels for communicating with the newsroom, such as the centralised News Desk. However because of the volume of news it is worthwhile communicating directly with relevant journalists where necessary.

Not all stories have to have a Coronavirus angle, and The Sydney Morning Herald is actively looking for "good news" to report to its readers.

At present, all sections, supplements and newspaper inserted magazines are running as normal, albeit remotely.